


The pursuit of a moon with no name

by laughingpineapple



Category: Twin Peaks
Genre: Chocolate Box Treat, Electricity, Gen, Surreal, Travels after canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-13
Updated: 2018-02-13
Packaged: 2019-03-17 23:42:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13669767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laughingpineapple/pseuds/laughingpineapple
Summary: There is a cold light hanging over Dale and Laura, casting strange shadows, and they are so, so lost.





	The pursuit of a moon with no name

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thebigbengal](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebigbengal/gifts).



Dale followed, through an expanse of violent green; Laura followed Dale, holding onto his hand. The tall woods surrounded them like an alien world, woven in tight, gnarled spires around a secret center. From the ferns of the outer underbrush, brilliant and heavy with fog, to the leaves of the giants, the firs and the alders that gathered in its innermost courts, the green was blinding in its ferocity. It buzzed in their ears and left a stench of heated plastic in their nostrils when they paused for breath.   
  
They had almost reached the procession. They always almost reached the procession. Six people cut a path through the woods in a long spiral toward its center, or fifteen, or thirty-three, which is always just six in the end, wearing green of a darker shade that did not hurt the eyes, long cloaks whose hems got lost among the tall grass, always almost in reach.    
  
Under the hemlock, Dale hurried his step. On a carpet of pine needles, he broke into a pained run, Laura panting by his side. The line of peregrins was near when Dale found himself under the hemlock again. Sisyphus on even ground. Or he was Theseus and they the red thread, but the the exit was the secret hidden at the center of the labyrinth, surrounded by twelve sycamore trees, and the corridors kept growing out of order and folding on their corners to make him lose his way.   
  
It felt like an old guilt had woken him up at the crack of dawn, and he'd stayed in bed for an hour, rubbing chafed eyes with cold fingers, unable to go back to the comfort of sleep. His eyes had grown sore for staring for too long at his guide, the dark figure at the head of the procession, making him out among the cutting shards of vivid green; the old guilt was his own. When Dale faltered in his pursuit, or when he doubted, or when a harsh grip on his hand meant that Laura was doing the doubting for him, the figure at the head of the procession halted, turned and tugged at his memories, like his chances for redemption hadn't expired, like a haunting could ever reach a happy ending. Harry Truman had found them - the cloaked shadow had the curve of Harry's shoulders and the softness in Harry's step, and the promise of Harry's forgiveness, if such a thing could still exist. The promise that love could reach out through worlds. If Harry led, the Bookhouse Boys followed. Hawk, Ed, James and Frank, followed by unnamed, uncountable figures from generations Dale had never met, men who knew of the secrets of the woods. They had gotten through to Dale, finding him in this place where all the worlds were closer, and they were leading them back, they were leading them home.    
  
Laura shook her head as he shared these thoughts with her: she didn't know these shadows.    
"They were part of your life, once," said Dale, hoping, maybe, to find reassurance that people who had touched each other's existence in passing a long time ago could still share a connection.   
She offered none. For seventeen years, men with badges and secret signs had given her nothing and cast their gaze the other way. They were shadows. Insubstantial ones at that. As big a deal as a cigarette drag in a smoked salmon factory.   
This cut deep through Cooper's heart, more than he remembered a disagreement ever could. Harry was part of his life, once. A brief month had meant so much.   
  
"Look at those firs, Laura!" he said, with shaky optimism, and tried to offer her his faith. "We must be near the center of the woods."    
"Dale," she said. "What woods?"   
Dale halted. The head of the procession halted, in wait, extending his arm toward him. Dale could smell resin, moss, and burnt formica.   
"The woods across the road by the widening where we parked our car for the night's rest", he heard himself say, brighter and more vivid than the plains and sky around them. Like the woods around Twin Peaks that still lingered at the threshold of his dreams, rustling, moaning, heavy with rain.   
"Dale," she said. "What woods?"   
  
(There had been a widening by the road and they had parked their car there for a night's rest. Across the road, in the dark of a wintry afternoon, they had seen the ominous mass of a long-abandoned industrial complex, its silos and chimneys rising up as unruly as old trees. They had slept under its shadow.)   
  
Dale's lungs filled with burnt oil. He leaned on a tree to catch his breath and his back touched bare metal pipes.   
  
"Where are we?"   
Laura shrugged, closing her eyes as if it could snap her out of that cold, hostile morning. "Thought you knew."   
"…near a center."   
Dale looked up at the shadows again, still green against the rusted landscape, still waiting. They turned one last corner. He followed.   
  
A wide plaza opened up ahead of them, the buildings on its far end blurred by a persistent fog. Above them, a maze of wires cris-crossed the steely sky, their path from pole to pole and wall to wall broken and sparking with electricity or loosened in long dark arches. At the center of this sagging net, reaching down to a few inches above their heads, a single, massive lightbulb flashed and buzzed, looming up like a solitary moon. As they stood underneath it, shivering in its hideous presence, their shadows were long and green.   
  
Laura reached up. She tapped it. It shrunk. She plucked it like an apple.   
  
"Now what? You think this'll come in handy later?" she said. "Like of of those video games?" but Dale wasn't listening. He kept staring past where the bulb used to be, to the sky. She weighed a finger on his chin until he deigned to look back down at her.   
"Laura. They're gone."   
"No shit."   
"Now…" Dale stared at the sky again, and at the bulb in Laura's hand, trying to discern a meaning, to trace a map of its surface, to find in its glow the shape of the man he had lost, like a fairytale man on the moon. "Now we trace our steps back. I thought… I thought they had found us. I apologize for the detour. I thought our guide was trusted. I thought…"   
They were alone in the wide, empty plaza.   
He thought they were loved.   
Laura wrapped an arm around his back and pulled him close - he thought of somebody he loved to the point that the memory broke his back and bent him in half. That was no detour.   
"Wanna do something for all that water that's not comin' down your cheeks?"   
"Such as?" he asked.   
"Like, I don't know. Screaming," she said with a shrug.   
"You'd know."   
"I can lead if you want."   
  
Their voices cracked glass and steel, reverberating through the empty alleys. Laura screamed of habits, ripped seams and dulled pains. Dale joined her with a knot in his throat, his voice an uncertain whisper until he found the string of names he had left behind roll like a prayer on his tongue, Harry first and last among their ranks. He screamed for them, for the road to hell, for missed second chances and a flat and empty horizon. He screamed for the novelty of it. He screamed as he felt the first tear pool in his eye. He screamed at his last and he felt empty and still.   
  
They followed a straight path out leaning on one another's shoulder like drunkards stranded on a distant planet. Nobody would come for them. They would keep driving. A pale moon rose.


End file.
